


The Artifice of Eternity

by hangingfire



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-18
Updated: 2007-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:42:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1627313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hangingfire/pseuds/hangingfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>William Butler Yeats, poet and mystic, receives back a manuscript of great value to him, recovered through the efforts of Lord Peter Wimsey. What the manuscript is, and from whence it came, has terrible implications for the future. Yeats RPF and Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey crossover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Artifice of Eternity

**Author's Note:**

> On discovering that my recipient was a fan of both Wimsey and Yeats, the urge to combine the two (both lifelong favourites of mine as well) became completely irresistible, and it's been a wonderful challenge. Many, many thanks to my beta-reader innocentsmith for her support and assistance.
> 
> Written for aftagley

 

 

The poet did not bother to untie the bundle of papers; he turned a few pages aside and, having satisfied himself as to the nature of the contents, nodded.

"It was good of you to come, Lord Peter."

Lord Peter Wimsey bowed his head politely. "It's an honour, sir."

"This is a tricky time for an Englishman to be in Dublin," William Butler Yeats replied. "You and what you represent are not terribly popular here."

"No indeed, I expect not. But I felt it would be best for me to deliver the papers personally."

"Of course, I should not have expected otherwise. George spoke highly of your elegant work -- tracing the manuscript to the Bodleian itself, I understand."

Wimsey made a small, modest noise. "I'm an old Oxonian myself, sir. It was really quite simple, once I determined that there was only one place that it could be."

Yeats held the bundle out, not quite offering it to the younger man's perusal. "I expect you want to know what this is. I know that George told you very little when she first communicated with you."

"I was satisfied with the explanation that she gave me, sir. That it was notes, research -- material you chose not to use in _A Vision_."

The old man nodded, and a faint smile played about his lips. "Quite. But did it ever occur to you to wonder why I chose not to use it?"

"It wasn't mine to wonder or ask," Wimsey replied. "All I needed to know was that it was a manuscript of significance to you."

Something in the fireplace snapped, sending up a small spray of sparks. "Quite so," Yeats murmured, gazing into the fire.

* * *

"You don't understand what this is, Wimsey. I shouldn't let you take this."

Wimsey sighed. "Don't make this difficult, Davenport."

"I don't want to, believe me." The librarian sighed and looked down at the bundle of papers in his hands. "He does understand, doesn't he, that it must be kept _safe_?"

"I'm sure he understands it better than anyone. After all, it's his, isn't it?"

Davenport didn't quite look at Wimsey; his gaze wandered out to the moonlit courtyard, and he frowned a little. "Depends on what you mean by 'his'."

"What are you talking about?"

"Never mind. Actually, if you really want to know, you ought to ask him. And tell him I'm sorry, won't you? I was just trying to help. And should he reconsider, we'd be more than happy to secure the papers in our archives." He slid the bundle across the desk to Wimsey, and his fingers lingered on it for a few moments before he finally let go.

* * *

"You took a First in History, didn't you, Lord Peter? You, of all people, must surely be aware of the patterns of history, the rise and fall, the turning of the gyres. You fought in the Great War, I understand. Served with considerable distinction."

"The Rifle Brigade, yes --"

"So you know firsthand, then, what this century is made of. Founded on the blood and bodies of young men."

Wimsey steepled his fingers and for a moment, couldn't look at his host. "I should like to think we should never see the likes of that again."

"So should we all. But I fear that is not the case." He tapped his fingers on the manuscript. "Do you know what automatic writing is, Lord Peter?"

"Er." Wimsey blinked. "It's a -- it's a spiritualist practice, isn't it?" he said. "Where the medium holds a pencil in her hand and lets the spirits move her?"

"Quite so. My wife is an adept. And it was her work that created the cornerstone of _A Vision_." He smiled, amused, as if he anticipated the other's scepticism. "One did wonder, at first, you know; she started the practice not long after we married, and some uncharitable souls might think she did it to reassure me that I had made the right choice. But time and experience has borne out that I did, and I believe we are better people -- and my poetry is also the better -- for it."

Wimsey merely nodded.

"It tired her terribly, of course, and later she allowed the communicators to speak through her in her sleep." He might as well have been talking about her favoured technique for embroidery. "But from 1917 to 1920, the writing was our method of choice. She went into her trance, and I would ask questions of the communicators. Which brings us to this." He tapped the manuscript.

"I wonder, sometimes, if there was not a certain amount of arrogant pride in attempting a writing on the day of the Armistice. But it seemed auspicious, and thus we engaged ourselves."

* * *

"Who is there?" Yeats called out.

There was a slight guttering of the candle-flame, and for a long moment nothing happened. George's head drooped slightly.

"Who is there?"

And then her hand twitched, drawing a long scrawling line across the paper. The line doubled back on itself, looped and twisted, sketching out a shape vaguely like a lemniscate.

He leaned forward, careful not to touch her and interrupt the flow. It wasn't a pattern he recognised; he was, by now, familiar with the symbols and scratches with which certain guides would announce themselves, and this was a new one. "Who is there?" he asked again.

Her hand fell still for a moment, and then began scratching out words. Scarcely legible at first, then growing stronger and more sharply defined:

_behold i have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions_

He frowned. Biblical quotation. Not something any of their communicators used.

_wee willie winkie runs through the town upstairs downstairs in his nightgown_

Nursery rhymes. Worse and worse. Another damn frustrator at work.

_the host are riding from knocknarea riding riding riding_

That could not fail to catch his attention -- his own verse being quoted back at him; oh, now this was too much. "Do you have a message for me?"

_riding writing oh you fool poor willie_

And then George's head went back, her mouth agape and _something_ poured forth. Ectoplasm? No, it was dark and heavy and it coiled three times in the air before sinking into the paper. Not just the paper on which she was writing: the entire stack of blank paper that lay on the table, ready for use.

He caught his wife as she slumped down, nearly falling from the chair. She was pale, feverish, and he was so concerned with making sure that she was safe and comfortable that it was some hours before he returned to the papers.

He had not read past the first few lines before he hurried to secure them.

* * *

"You are a man of the modern age, for all that you continue to cast your gaze back to the past as all aristocrats do. I know you will find it hard to believe me when I say that I saw this with my own eyes, but I swear to you, it was as real as you sitting before me."

He passed a hand over his face, and looked very worn.

"Perhaps I should have stopped there; we were fortunate that such a thing never happened again. We let something through, Lord Peter. Something beyond the usual scope of my Instructors. I can't say that I blame Davenport entirely for doing what he thought was best, but there is no safe place for this manuscript. Save one."

Yeats rose from his chair with considerable effort and crossed to the fireplace. He paused for a moment and then, with a swift gesture, flung the bundle of papers into the fire. The flames leaped high and all the lights in the room flickered sickeningly.

Wimsey was half out of his chair before he even realised what he was doing. "Sir!"

The lamps shone now as if their light had never changed, and the papers crackled and curled in the flames. Wimsey felt sick, thinking suddenly of Louvain. He forced himself to look at his host, and found the older man regarding him with brightening eyes.

"Perhaps you would like to know what that was, now that it is gone."

"It's for you to say, sir." He glanced back at the fireplace. The smoke and the sparks curled strangely -- or not; he blinked, and it was just an ordinary fire. The sick feeling in his stomach faded a little, and Wimsey returned his attention to Yeats. He felt almost as if he had been running, and willed his breathing to steadiness.

"You know the expression 'the spirit of the age', of course. A trite little cliche, but as with so many cliches, there is perhaps an underlying truth.

"When I looked at the papers that the thing had touched, I found them covered with writing -- even the paper that George and I had not touched. And there was a history, Lord Peter. A history of the coming century and the coming millennium."

The poet rose from his chair again, and it seemed to Wimsey that he moved with less effort now -- still not easily, but with less pain, perhaps. He picked up the fireplace poker and prodded the blackened pages, which crumbled and sent up a spray of more unnatural-looking sparks.

"There are difficult times ahead, Lord Peter. What you saw in the trenches is but a foretaste of terrible times to come. Bodies will be stacked like match-sticks, cities will burn on a scale we have never seen -- the very stones will melt. It benefits no one to know these things; it is enough that I carry this myself."

He lowered himself back into his chair. "It's better gone. I felt it, you know -- that thing, whatever it was that came through and trapped itself in the pages. It has been released, and taken a great burden from me with it." He offered Wimsey a smile, the most genuine sort of smile he'd worn yet. "Thank you, Lord Peter. You have done more than you know."

* * *

Lord Peter Wimsey sat at the breakfast table in his Piccadilly flat, not eating the plate of eggs and bacon in front of him.

"Bunter?"

The valet, engaged in the task of picking out his lordship's clothes for the day, set down a pair of flannel trousers and answered the summons. "Yes, my lord?"

"What's your take on spiritualism?"

"My lord?"

"Talking to spirits, spells to appeal to the Grand Panjandrum, you know. Mediums. Automatic writing, say."

"I confess that it is not a subject in which I have taken very much interest, my lord. It appears to be a great deal of effort for very little reward."

"So you don't think there's really anything to it, then?"

"I could not say, my lord. Absent any empirical proof, I think that it seems as plausible as any other system of belief."

"A very politic answer, Bunter. Thank you."

"My lord." Bunter departed, to return his attention to his lordship's wardrobe.

Wimsey reflected that he really needed to get to work on the preparations for the Rogers business. All the elements were coming into alignment now: the flat prepared, everything else slowly falling into place. After breakfast, he would set to work. Once he'd shaken this dullness that seemed to have seized his wits this morning.

There had been a dream the night before, another dream of the Somme -- more vague than most, thank God. It was simply the sensation of going over the top: the implacable dread, the resignation to the fact that your death could be inches away, the hope that it wasn't. And in the dream the moment was strangely protracted, or perhaps it was simply repeated over and over again, an eternity of doom.

And he'd woken up with one very clear thought at the forefront of his mind: _I think there's going to be another war._

He hoped he was wrong. He hoped that wasn't one of the terrible things in the papers that Yeats had thrown on the fire. And if it was, he hoped the poet would never see it.

 


End file.
